Niccolo Machiavelli was an aristocrat who was put in a prison because people thought he committed crime against the government. While he was in prison he had to support himself by being a writer. Machiavelli wrote about how a prince, or ruler, must maintain his power. Machiavelli’s views revolved around the ideas that one must do anything within his power to keep the influence and power that he had attained. For him, anything that must be done in order not to lose the influence and the power that one has should be done without question. Without the fear in the people, the trust that they have in their leader will whither and they will start to look for other leaders to take the place of the one that they believe to be weak.
A good prince should follow instincts and does not have to spend other people’s money, break promises, or be cruel and mean to gain power. But Machiavelli thought that the importance of this tactic should override all others. Although, he believed in emanating a sense of fear to the people that were being ruled, he also believed that without the people, the ruler or
Also, spending other people’s money makes the prince seem selfish. No one would trust and respect him. Machiavelli said the prince’s reputation would get better but actually it would get worse because people needed the money for themselves. The prince might get power but he would not maintain it because these people were not going to want to follow a man like this. His subjects would be afraid that the Prince would take their hard-earned money whenever they saw him.
A prince never lacked legitimate reasons to break his promises. This advice from Machiavelli would not only make his subjects not trust him, but also other rulers would not want to make promises with him. They would know that they could not trust him. If the other rulers heard about the prince breaking promises they would be afraid that he could do it to them too. The prince might get power or he might be a good ruler, but people would hate him and would not listen to him any more. These thoughts today would be looked at as dictatorial and likened with the beliefs and feeling of such hated groups as the Nazis. In today’s system,
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